“Allahu akbar” is an Arabic phrase that has become significant in this post-9/11 era, yet in the aftermath of the attack Tuesday in which eight people were killed and a dozen injured, official after official and news outlet after news outlet mistranslated it, insisting it means “God is great.”

An accurate translation – and even Google Translate affirms it – is “Allah is the greatest” or, literally, “Allah is greater,” as in the god Allah is greater than all other gods.

The interpretation is important, contends Islam expert Robert Spencer, because it makes clear that the threat Western Civilization faces is rooted in a historic dogma of global conquest.

“‘God is great’ is a bland statement of piety. ‘Allah is greater’ is a declaration of supremacism and superiority, and of victory over the infidels,” Spencer told WND.

“The former is just an expression, the latter a declaration of war and of victory in that war,” said Spencer, the director of Jihad Watch and the author of 17 books about Islam. …

Translating and understanding “Allahu akbar” as “merely ‘God is great’ strips the phrase of its crucial aspect of Allah’s supremacy over all other deities,” wrote Yigal Carmon of the Middle East Media Research Institute.